Smashed Director Going To Get Pure – James Ponsoldt’s Apocalyptic Follow Up To The Spectacular Now

What do you do when you start making a name for yourself on the indie scene? You leave all that burdensome artistic integrity behind and start making money doing movies for throngs of screaming teenage girls, of course.

All kidding aside, James Ponsoldt is someone who has been gaining a lot of notice via the Sundance circuit thanks to last year’s Smashed and this year’s The Specatular Now, and now he’s ready to bring his considerable talents to a major, mainstream studio picture.

Young Adult novel adaptations are all the rage, thanks to the success of Twilight and The Hunger Games, and according to THR, Ponsoldt has just been set by Fox 2000 to adapt and direct their hopeful potential franchise starter: a film based on Julianna Baggott’sPure.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world, Pure‘s society is divided in two. There’s the Pures, who were left unharmed by the destruction of the planet but must live under a dome, and the Wretches, who live free outside the dome but are weak, scarred and have face the bleak future of either joining the army or being used as live targets. Yikes.

A young Pure boy named Partridge meets a young Wretched girl named Pressia and the rest is history (to be told over three novels and at least four movies, because Harry Potter did it, so now everyone has to).

Will it be the next Twilight or Hunger Games? In an increasingly crowded field, it’s hard to say. My money is still on Neil Burger’s Divergent as Most Likely To Succeed, but Ponsoldt’s name certainly adds a level of intrigue to this one.